Christian von Soest

How Does Neopatrimonialism Affect the African State? The Case of Tax Collection in Zambia

Following the neopatrimonialism paradigm, it can be hypothesised that in African states informal politics of the rulers infringe on the collection of taxes and in turn reduce state revenues. This article tests this proposition for the case of Zambia. The main finding is that there is no linear correlation between a neopatrimonial system and the collection of taxes. Neopatrimonial continuity in the country is evidenced by three factors; the concentration of political power, the award of personal favours and the misuse of state resources. Despite this continuity, the revenue performance has increased considerably with the creation of the semi-autonomous Zambia Revenue Authority. This demonstrates that the effect of neopatrimonialism on public policy in the African state is highly context-specific and dependent on the interaction with additional variables. Donor pressure has been the most important in the Zambian case. In order to apply neopatrimonialism for further empirical work on public policy in the African state, these additional variables have to be incorporated into the analysis.

Claims to Legitimacy Matter: Why Sanctions Fail to Instigate Democratization in Authoritarian Regimes

International sanctions have been one of the most commonly used tools of Western foreign policy in the post-Cold War era to instigate democratization globally. However, despite long-term external pressure through sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and/or the United Nations, nondemocratic rule in cases such as Belarus, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea and Syria has proven to be extremely persistent. In this paper, we analyze a new global dataset on sanctions from 1990 to 2011 and assess which international and domestic factors account for the persistence of nondemocratic rule in targeted regimes. The results of a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of 120 episodes of sanctions provide new insights for the research on both sanctions and authoritarian regimes. Most significantly, sanctions strengthen nondemocratic rule if the regime manages to incorporate their existence into its legitimation strategy. Such a “rally-round-the-flag” effect occurs most often in cases where comprehensive sanctions targeting the entire population are imposed on regimes that enjoy strong claims to legitimacy and have only limited linkages to the sanction sender.

Democracy prevention: the international collaboration of authoritarian regimes

Current scholarship increasingly argues that international factors and, more specifically, authoritarian collaboration fundamentally affect the persistence of authoritarian rule. In order to generate a better understanding of the nature and effects of these international dimensions of authoritarianism, this article provides a conceptual framework for various aspects of authoritarian collaboration to prevent democracy, particularly the relationship between authoritarian regime types and their international democracy-prevention policies. It differentiates between authoritarian diffusion, learning, collaboration and support, as well as between deliberate efforts to avert democracy and efforts not explicitly geared towards strengthening autocracy. The article further distinguishes between crisis events and normal conditions where authoritarian rulers’ hold on power is not in danger. It is argued that authoritarian powers’ motivations to provide support to fellow autocrats are self-serving rather than driven by an ideological commitment to creating an ‘authoritarian international’: authoritarian rulers first and foremost strive to maximise their own survival chances by selectively supporting acquiescent authoritarian regimes, maintaining geostrategic control and fostering their developmental goals.

How Does Neopatrimonialism Affect the African State's Revenues? The Case of Tax Collection in Zambia

Following the neopatrimonialism paradigm, it can be hypothesised that in African states informal politics of the rulers infringe on the collection of taxes and in turn reduce state revenue. This article tests this proposition for the case of Zambia. Neopatrimonial continuity in the country is evidenced by three factors: the concentration of political power, the award of personal favours, and the misuse of state resources. Despite this continuity, the revenue performance increased considerably with the creation of the semi-autonomous Zambia Revenue Authority. Donor pressure has been the most important intervening variable accounting for this improvement. Yet, strengthening the collection of central state revenue has been consistent with a neopatrimonial rationale, and may even have fed neopatrimonialism overall, by providing increased resources for particularistic expenditure.

How Neopatrimonialism Affects Tax Administration: A Comparative Study of Three World Regions

Neopatrimonialism is a concept that has predominately been applied to describe governance in sub‐Saharan Africa. Recently, though, it has also been used to describe states from other world regions. However, scholars have rarely attempted to systematically compare neopatrimonial rule in different regional settings. This paper aims to narrow this gap by examining the effect of neopatrimonialism on the tax administration as a core state function in six countries from three different world regions: Argentina, Venezuela, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kenya and Zambia. We conclude that neopatrimonialism is a valuable concept for comparative area studies with the potential to foster dialogue on the “state in operation” across the regional divide. However, several indicators are more valid for some world regions than for others. We find that there is no systematic relationship between neopatrimonial trajectories and the strength of tax administration. Individual actor decisions influence the outcomes of neopatrimonialism substantially.

Structural stability: On the prerequisites of nonviolent conflict management

The concept of “structural stability” has been gaining prominence in development policy circles. In the EU’s and the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s (OECD DAC) understanding, it describes the ability of societies to handle intra-societal conflict without resorting to violence. This study investigates the preconditions of structural stability and tests their mutual interconnections. Seven dimensions are analyzed: (1) long-term economic growth, (2) environmental security, (3) social equality, (4) governmental effectiveness, (5) democracy, (6) rule of law, and (7) inclusion of identity groups. The postulated mutual enhancement of the seven dimensions is plausible but cannot be proven. The most significant positive relationship appears between “democracy” and “rule of law,” respectively, on the one hand and the dependent variable “violence/ human security” on the other hand. This points to the usefulness of the political concept of structural stability to promote development policy agendas in this area at least. Applications that reach beyond these initial findings will, however, require further research.

Comparing Legitimation Strategies in Post-Soviet Countries

In contrast to hopes that the post-Soviet countries would liberalize politically as part of ‘democracy’s third wave’ (Huntington, 1991), various regimes in the region have regressed into authoritarianism, while others have remained in a hybrid state between democracy and authoritarian rule or have never undergone any form of democratization. Over the course of changes in rulers, socioeconomic crises and even so-called color revolutions, non-democratic arrangements of political rule have emerged and persisted — a phenomenon by no means limited to the post-Soviet space (Schedler, 2006; Levitsky and Way, 2010; Bunce and Wolchik, 2011). Recent research on authoritarian regimes seeking to account for these developments has provided new insights into the inner workings of non-democratic polities (for recent overviews, see Kollner and Kailitz, 2013; Pepinsky, 2014). However, despite widely held views that a regime s claim to legitimacy is an important factor in explaining its means of rule, and ultimately its persistence (Easton, 1965; Weber, 1980; Wintrobe, 1998), current studies have largely overlooked the effect of different legitimation strategies on authoritarian power relations (Burnell, 2006; Gerschewski, 2013; Kailitz, 2013).

Are democratic sanctions really counterproductive

Previous research has shown that sanctions have a negative impact on the level of democracy in targeted authoritarian countries. This runs counter to substantive comparative literature on democratization which finds that economic stress is connected with regime collapse and democratic liberalization. To solve this puzzle, we focus on the effects of “democratic sanctions” (those that explicitly aim to promote democracy) which have become the most common type of sanction issued against authoritarian states. We introduce a new data set of imposed sanctions in the period 1990–2010 that clearly separates sanctions according to the explicit goal of the sender. Our cross-sectional time-series analysis demonstrates that although sanctions as a whole do not generally increase the level of democracy, there is in fact a significant correlation between democratic sanctions and increased levels of democracy in targeted authoritarian countries. A fundamental mechanism leading to this outcome is the increased instability of authoritarian rule as democratic sanctions are significantly associated with a higher probability of regime and leadership change.

Not all dictators are equal Coups, fraudulent elections, and the selective targeting of democratic sanctions

Since the end of the Cold War, Western powers have frequently used sanctions to fight declining levels of democracy and human rights violations abroad. However, some of the world’s most repressive autocracies have never been subjected to sanctions, while other more competitive authoritarian regimes have been exposed to repeated sanction episodes. In this article, we concentrate on the cost–benefit analysis of Western senders that issue democratic sanctions, those which aim to instigate democratization, against authoritarian states. We argue that Western leaders weight domestic and international pressure to impose sanctions against the probability of sanction success and the sender’s own political and economic costs. Their cost–benefit calculus is fundamentally influenced by the strength of trigger events indicating infringements of democratic and human rights. Western sanction senders are most likely to respond to coups d’état, the most drastic trigger events, and tend to sanction vulnerable targets to a higher extent than stable authoritarian regimes. Senders are also more likely to sanction poor targets less integrated in the global economy and countries that do not align with the Western international political agenda, especially in responding to ‘weaker’ trigger events such as controversial elections. The analysis is carried out using a new dataset of US and EU sanctions against authoritarian states in the period 1990–2010.

AIDS, Access to Medicines, and the Different Roles of the Brazilian and South African Governments in Global Health Governance

The present article illustrates how the main actors in global health governance (GHG)— governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IOs), and transnational pharmaceutical companies (TNPCs)—have been interacting and, as a result, modifying the global health architecture in general and AIDS treatment in particular. Using the concept of “power types” (Keohane/Martin) and “interfaces” (Norman Long), the authors examine the conflicts among major GHG actors that have arisen surrounding the limited access to medicines for fighting HIV/AIDS basically as a result of the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), in force since 1995. They then analyze the efforts of Brazil and South Africa to obtain fast and low-cost access to antiretroviral medication against AIDS. They conclude that while policy makers in the two countries have used different approaches to tackle the AIDS problem, they have been able, with the support of NGOs, to modify TRIPS and change some WTO rules at the global level along legal interfaces. At the national level the results of the fight against AIDS have been encouraging for Brazil, but not for South Africa, where authorities denied the challenge for a prolonged period of time. The authors see the different outcomes as a consequence of Brazil’s ability to combine discoursive, legal, administrative, and resource-based interfaces.